Disrupted brain connectivity in children treated with therapeutic hypothermia for neonatal encephalopathy
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Therapeutic hypothermia following neonatal encephalopathy due to birth asphyxia reduces death and cerebral palsy. However, school-age children without cerebral palsy treated with therapeutic hypothermia for neonatal encephalopathy still have reduced performance on cognitive and motor tests, attention difficulties, slower reaction times and reduced visuo-spatial processing abilities compared to typically developing controls. We acquired diffusion-weighted imaging data from school-age children without cerebral palsy treated with therapeutic hypothermia for neonatal encephalopathy at birth, and a matched control group. Voxelwise analysis (33 cases, 36 controls) confirmed reduced fractional anisotropy in widespread areas of white matter in cases, particularly in the fornix, corpus callosum, anterior and posterior limbs of the internal capsule bilaterally and cingulum bilaterally. In structural brain networks constructed using probabilistic tractography (22 cases, 32 controls), graph-theoretic measures of strength, local and global efficiency, clustering coefficient and characteristic path length were found to correlate with IQ in cases but not controls. Network-based statistic analysis implicated brain regions involved in visuo-spatial processing and attention, aligning with previous behavioural findings. These included the precuneus, thalamus, left superior parietal gyrus and left inferior temporal gyrus. Our findings demonstrate that, despite the manifest successes of therapeutic hypothermia, brain development is impaired in these children.
Date Acceptance
2021-01-28
Citation
NeuroImage: Clinical, 30
ISSN
2213-1582
Publisher
Elsevier
Journal / Book Title
NeuroImage: Clinical
Volume
30
Copyright Statement
© 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
License URL
Identifier
http://gateway.webofknowledge.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?GWVersion=2&SrcApp=PARTNER_APP&SrcAuth=LinksAMR&KeyUT=WOS:000661170900010&DestLinkType=FullRecord&DestApp=ALL_WOS&UsrCustomerID=1ba7043ffcc86c417c072aa74d649202
Subjects
Science & Technology
Life Sciences & Biomedicine
Neuroimaging
Neurosciences & Neurology
Neonatal encephalopathy
Therapeutic hypothermia
White matter
Structural connectivity
Brain networks
Diffusion-weighted imaging
HYPOXIC-ISCHEMIC ENCEPHALOPATHY
POSTERIOR CINGULATE CORTEX
9-TO 10-YEAR-OLD CHILDREN
HUMAN CEREBRAL-CORTEX
WHITE-MATTER
DIFFUSION MRI
SPATIAL STATISTICS
HUMAN CONNECTOME
STRUCTURAL CONNECTIVITY
DEFAULT MODE
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
ARTN 102582
Date Publish Online
2021-02-10